My Biggest Wish For Season Finale Of The First Season Of Tangled Series Is To Simply See More Of Arianna.

My biggest wish for season finale of the first season of Tangled Series is to simply see more of Arianna. She is always listed as one of the main characters but this far, she has been left out of focus a lot. So much that I dare even say her characterization has suffered from this. We only have hints about Arianna’s personality. She is said to have been adventurous as a young woman and today she is a caring mother. But beyond that, she is a mystery. Even Eugene admits that she is hard to read.

Arianna is clearly a caring mother but her moments with Rapunzel are fleeting and mostly limited to key words of advice. She is wise but there is a lack of tender or affectionate moments between them, which makes Arianna appear a bit distant compared to her husband. It’s hinted that Arianna wishes to spend more quality time with her daughter but the show never addresses how she feels about balancing roles of mother and queen when raising a daughter and a princess. We also do not know how she feels about losing Rapunzel for all those years or if she has any trauma like her husband. It has not even been addressed how she feels about the current situation between her husband and daughter, or how much she knows about the details.

Besides this, Arianna rarely voices any opinions despite appearing to act as Frederik’s counsel and support. All decisions this far have been made by Frederik without Arianna making any comments, even when he places a martial law on their daughter. Arianna may be great at keeping peace and balance, but we never see her actually doing that because her moments are so short. We have about one scene where she shows her ability to be diplomatic; when she does not tell Frederik that Eugene was the thief who stole her ring all those years ago.

Arianna’s adventurous past has not been elaborated on despite offering great parallels between her situation and Rapunzel’s current dilemma. Some inner motivation made Arianna want to settle down and Rapunzel is struggling to find something that might make her wish the same, as future queen. Not everything can be written in a single season, but Arianna’s precious focus episode was spent on comical adventure and since then, even hints have disappeared.

This is why I’m desperate to get more characterization for her in the finale, where she will be kidnapped. Mothers in fiction tend to get the short stick when it comes to conflict and characterization. Because motherhood is idealized and assumed to be something that comes naturally for female characters, mothers are not seen as interesting like fathers are. Tangled Series has many interesting fathers with meaningful conflict with their children so I think Arianna, the only on-screen mother we have, deserves more focus.